Medical Imaging

MedPAC verifies drop in imaging spending, utilization

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (PedPAC) acknowledged the recent downward trend in Medicare spending and utilization on medical imaging procedures in its annual March Report to Congress, a move applauded by the Medical Imaging and Technology Alliance (MITA)... [see full article]

Changes to Medicare Physician Fee Schedule: The Correction Notice included minor revisions to a few radiation oncology procedure codes. Specifically the technical components of CPT codes 77402, 77615, 77776 and 77787 decreased by 0.01 relative value unit (RVU) resulting in a slight change to the 2012 payment. The current conversion factor of $34.0376 will remain in place through the end of the year due to the recently passed legislation. Updated 2012 RVUs and payment rates are available on the AAPM website (see below for web address).

Changes to Hospital Outpatient Services and Ambulatory Surgical Center Payments:In the Correction Notice CMS reports that they discovered that the trim of unpaid lines was not applied correctly. CMS corrected the programming logic in the data process to apply the line item trim correctly and recalculated the median costs for each separately paid service using the claims that result from the correctly applied trim. This correction resulted in slight payment increases or decreases to all radiation oncology procedure APCs and slight decreases to all brachytherapy source APC payments.

The same correction also impacted payments for surgical procedures and ancillary services provided in ambulatory surgical centers.